


in chambers like the rooms a swallow made

by magdaliny



Series: quiet americans [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12020928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdaliny/pseuds/magdaliny
Summary: Jay wakes up confused.





	in chambers like the rooms a swallow made

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [there must have been a moment where we could have said no](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10294451) by [magdaliny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdaliny/pseuds/magdaliny). 



> The first of the post- _Moment_ ficlets! (Word count? I have no idea what you're talking about. What's a word count.) This one is 95% marshmallow fluff by volume, and follows directly from where _[there must have been a moment where we could have said no](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10294451)_ left off, with Steve and J in the bungalow. If you catch any mistakes, please forgive me -- I'm working betaless and on a deadline, at the moment, and these things do happen.
> 
> So far I have seven more of these post-credits extras plotted out, but only one finished. That'll go up in a few days. A twofer! Insanity! I'm moving across the whole of Canada on October 1st, though, so I wanted to leave y'all with a cotton candy chaser to tide you over until I get settled. As ever, thanks for reading, darlings. <3

### September 2016

Jay wakes up confused. Not that there's another person in his bed—he's not _that_ groggy first thing in the morning—but he swears he fell asleep wrapped around Steve, and now Steve's playing the big spoon with his face mashed into Jay's spine. It's a good thing Jay doesn't have to pee, because Steve's arm is like an iron bar around his stomach, fingers curled protectively into a fist over the port. He runs through a mental inventory: has his breakfast alarm gone off? can he hear children? did he promise anyone he'd be available by now? After a glance at the light level on the walls, he determines that the answer to all three is a resounding _no_ , and settles a little further under the blankets.

He doesn't think Steve fully woke up, at whatever ludicrous hour of the morning Jay's ass had finally fallen asleep in front of the fire. Steve had wandered obligingly to the mattress and crawled in under his own power, but Jay's pretty sure he was out again before he'd finished curling into a ball; he hadn't pulled the blankets up. Jay had taken the glasses back to the kitchen first, but he'd also fallen asleep practically the moment his head hit the pillow. Surprising nobody, least of all himself, Jay's slept better in these last few hours than he probably has since arriving in Sussex. It'll be hard, he thinks, to adjust to an empty bed when Steve goes back to New York.

 _I know you_ , Jay had said to Steve in the dark, in the garden. He'd meant it, although—that had been the problem once, hadn't it? The knowing. Eventually, it'd been a solution; or not a solution, exactly, but a foundation. Something you could build on top of. But he doesn't really _know_ Steve at all, not practically. Not in the details. His actual self, not the numinous thing Barnes remembers and insists is enough to be getting on with. Jay doesn't really know how to begin, with that as his lodestone. _What happens in your dreams?_ he wants to ask. _What do you think about when you can't sleep? What's the one song that always gets stuck in your head? What do you feel when you paint—and do you, still?_ He probably does, Jay realizes. Art coordinator, he'd said, and _my vets_ ; he must have started again. Jay feels a little thrill of something that's hard to label. Pride, maybe, and hope.

Jay doesn't realize that Steve is conscious, or that he's getting hard against Jay's back, until he suddenly jerks his hips away with an irritated noise.

“At ease, soldier, I'm not afraid of it,” Jay says.

“Didn't want you to think you had to do anything about it,” Steve mumbles, sounding only three-fifths awake. “Also you're warm.”

“So?”

“Temptation,” Steve says, “I was gonna,” and then clearly wakes up the rest of the way, because he shoves his hot face to the gap between Jay's neck and the pillow, like he's hiding.

“Rub off on me like a teenager,” Jay finishes, and Steve makes a muffled noise of despair. “You could. I don't mind. It's _my_ dick I don't want anything to do with.”

“I don't want to,” Steve says. “I mean, thanks? But I was enjoying just, you know. Laying here. It's nice.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe. Dunno.”

Jay's willing to bet that it's been within ninety seconds of that estimate. Steve's internal clock, like Jay's, seems closer to atomic than biological.

Now that Steve's mobile, there's no reason not to ask: “Hey, pass me your phone? If you can reach it.”

Jay feels Steve lean away, hears him fumble around on the bookshelf. A few moments later, a smartphone drops onto the far side of the pillow, and Steve wraps himself back around Jay like an octopus.

“What're you doing?” Steve asks.

“Texting Stark before I chicken out.” He finishes typing _So I hear you're the man to bother if I want a prosthetic_ and hits send.

“You don't have to.”

“I really want a vegetable plot,” Jay admits, trying not to think too hard about the logistics. “If the thing's basic, I think it'll be okay.” Stark's response is almost instant: _You heard right, Capability Brown. When can I come touch you up in a totally consensual and respectful way?_ If Stark is surprised, he doesn't let on. Jay replies, _Whenever; I'm not going anywhere_ , and tucks the phone under his pillow.

“I don't think Tony's capable of _basic_ ,” Steve mutters, “But I'm sure you can wear him down.” And then, less sure: “I, um.”

“Yeah?”

“I don't know if I'm—if I should ask.”

“If I don't like it, I got elbows.”

“Well,” Steve says, “You've got _one_ ,” and Jay employs it. “Hey! So, um. In New York, after you left...”

“You can ask about that,” Jay says, pre-emptively, when Steve trails off.

“Okay,” Steve says. He relaxes, but not much. “So, after they fake-shot you—I mean, fake-shot fake-you—”

“Fake shot, real me,” Jay says, and feels Steve twitch behind him. “We had a confab, decided it wouldn't be believable if it there wasn't a good close-up of my face. The public was fooled once already by O'Malley, right? They would've been suspicious.”

“I figured it was CGI. Camera trickery. That was really you?”

“Yeah. Me, remote detonators, and a whole lot of fake blood. If you want a laugh, hit up Agent Willoughby, I'm pretty sure she's got a video of Romanova and me trying to share the one shower on the SHIELD plane. We looked like a fuckin' horror movie. Did you know she wears novelty underwear under that catsuit?”

“Regrettably,” Steve says, “Yes,” and he sounds so mournful that Jay has to laugh. A moment later: “It's just—I thought about you alone, a lot. Alone and scared, or running, or. But you weren't.”

“No. Romanova was there, and Agent Willoughby and Agent Pham, and whoever was flying the plane. Romanova stayed over the first night, even.”

That had been an adventure in itself. Both of them had been on edge and uncomfortable, if for different reasons; Romanova'd been glued to her phone, checking status updates, checking news feeds, checking social media. Mostly different reasons, anyway. _I don't like places like this_ , she'd allowed, late into the night, holding a cup of coffee with both hands and trailing him as he stalked from window to window, disturbed by the roundness of the silence. _You can't see anybody coming_ , she added, either in explanation or in rebuke, and had twitched the curtains shut. She'd fallen asleep in the armchair just before dawn, and Jay had gone out to watch the sun rise over the garden for the first time, and he remembers thinking, exhausted and detached, mouth open, unwanted but not untrue: _I'd kill to keep this safe._

“I'm glad,” Steve says, very small.

“I tried not to think about you,” Jay says. Steve's fingers, conscious or unconscious, start rubbing small circles on Jay's hip. “I knew you were safe, so I just couldn't—take that luxury, I guess. I knew if I let myself do it I wasn't going to stop.”

“I'm glad,” Steve repeats, “Actually. I could tell it was a lot. For you. I didn't like thinking I'd hurt you. Or upset you. On top of everything else.”

“You didn't, not really,” Jay says. “I was more mad at myself for—hey, don't stop, that felt nice.”

“You flinched,” Steve says, and Jay's about to explain that it was surprise, not discomfort, when Steve strokes his hand deliberately over Jay's waist to his sternum, circling the port, backtracking with his fingertips. Jay shivers and makes an involuntary noise.

Steve pauses. “Good or bad?”

“Good. Uh, really good.”

“Oh!” Steve sounds pleased. He drags his fingertips over Jay's ribs, skin on the way down, gentle nails on the way up, and then the flat of his palm. Jay, startled by it, presses his fist to his mouth. “Don't, I want to hear you. What's it feel like?”

“Just—good,” Jay says, as Steve moves to his back. “I don't know. Warm. Kind of electric. Like putting your finger in a socket, but in a nice way. Would this turn you on?”

“Probably,” Steve says. “I mean, if you were doing it.”

Jay rolls over onto his back, stretching his arm above his head, eyes closed. Steve's hand moves up over his chest, drawing circles from his ribs to his collarbones. Christ, that's even better.

“That's how it is for most people, I guess,” Steve says. “It's different if your ma does it. But I knew a guy who'd get turned on every time anybody at all—I won't go lower—touched his stomach,” and Steve spreads his hand over Jay's belly, from one hip to the other, slow and firm.

“Doesn't do anything for me,” Jay says. “Makes me a little anxious, if anything.” Steve obligingly moves upward. “Dunno why.”

Steve suggests: “Too close to the no-go zone?” His hand ghosts past Jay's left nipple and onto the scar tissue, where Jay mostly stops feeling it; dead nerve endings. He relocates it higher on his shoulder. “Or, well, it's a vulnerable area. Probably about the worst place you can get shot.”

Jay opens his eyes. Steve's propped up on one elbow on his pillow, reaching across, his fingers on the side of Jay's neck. He looks sleep-rumpled and ridiculous, his dyed-dark hair sticking up in clumps. Jay reaches up to try to fix it, and Steve smiles. “Hi,” he says.

“Hey, yourself.” Jay tightens his fingers in Steve's hair. “Is that your idea of romancing me? Talking about gut shots?”

“Well,” Steve says, “You _could_ say that was your opening move—”

“Get down here,” Jay says, and Steve does.

Jay, admittedly, hasn't kissed enough people to compare, and he's been physical with Steve for maybe twelve hours, but he likes this the best, even taking into consideration awkward angles and morning breath and Steve's own professed inexperience. It's Steve; Jay shouldn't be surprised by the sweetness of his focus, that he puts one hundred and ten percent of his concentration into it, but it gets Jay every time. The way kissing's portrayed in movies often seems to him like sparring, like somebody's trying to win, but this is more like dancing. Movement and response. Is it different, he wonders, if the goal is sex? Does the want make people vicious? Maybe it depends on the person. For all that Steve fights like a cornered wolverine, Jay can't see him being like that with a sex partner.

Jay turns his head slightly to the side when he needs a breather, and Steve rests their temples together. The back of his neck is hot under Jay's fingers. After a minute, Steve slides down and puts his head on Jay's right shoulder, his knees pointing the other way and his spine twisted. It seems like it should be uncomfortable, but a lot of their skin is touching, and Jay can't feel a single tense muscle in Steve's torso. He doesn't mean to fall back to sleep, but he drifts off anyway; muddles awake when Steve rolls onto his back and stretches.

“Sorry,” Jay says, before his brain catches up with his mouth, and moves onto his side, closer, when Steve snorts. He puts his chin on Steve's arm. “Hey, I was wondering...”

“Yeah?”

“I asked her to call me James,” Jay says. “The Nurse. It's the name on my birth certificate, technically. It felt more appropriate than a nickname.”

“I—yeah.”

“Right. So. You could too. If you wanted to.”

Steve looks surprised, but not unhappy. “Sure. I mean, would you like that?”

“Yeah,” Jay says. “It feels, I don't know. Special. Something for the people who really know me. Like an in-joke.”

Steve says, “James,” like he's trying it on for size. “Jimsey,” he adds, but can't keep a straight face.

“You're funny,” Jay says gravely. “Did you ever call him that? James?”

Steve's already shaking his head. “It took about a year before I figured out his first name wasn't actually Bucky. That's what everybody called him. Too many Jameses in the neighbourhood, I guess.”

“And the cousin.”

Steve blinks at him and then exclaims: “The _cousin_! I forgot about him! Christ, of all the things I'm _not_ surprised you remember.”

“I don't remember much, except that he was awful,” Jay says, grinning at Steve's outrage. “And everybody spoke his name in tones of dread. Where'd he end up, anyway? Prison?”

“Ireland, apparently,” Steve says, “Breeding sheep,” and Jay almost yelps, he laughs so hard. “Which, depending...”

“Probably worse than prison,” Jay agrees. “To some people. You think you'd be any good at it?” The face Steve makes is eloquent. “No, me neither.”

“I met too many sheep in Europe,” Steve says. “The cows were okay, but sheep are stupid _and_ too smart for their own good. And they got teeth like knives.”

Jay bares his own. Steve starts smiling, and it's still growing when Jay goes for his ear, _baa-_ ing with playful menace. He grabs Steve's earlobe in his teeth and growls, tugging. Steve, laughing with a kind of wide-open delight Jay's never heard come out of him before, grabs Jay around the waist with both arms and rolls them over, all knees and elbows. Their attempt to wrestle is stymied by the sheets, tangling around their legs. Panting, they grin at each other across about three inches of distance. Jay crosses his eyes deliberately, and Steve laughs again before he ducks his head, setting his teeth gently into Jay's neck, not quite biting and not quite kissing. It feels weird but not unpleasant, so Jay hums and lets him, rubbing his knuckles against Steve's ribs.

“Sorry,” Steve says when he leans back. “I think I made a mark. Geez, you bruise easy.”

“I bet you like it,” Jay says. “Staking a claim.” Steve's shoulders come up but he doesn't deny it. “Nobody around here to challenge you for me, though. Unless you feel like duelling the ninety-six-year-old next door, and honestly, I'd put my money on Jakob.”

“You let me _name_ you,” Steve says, and that's—a pretty good rebuttal, actually. Jay pretends to glower, for appearance's sake.

Steve's opening his mouth to add something when the doorbell rings.

Steve looks at Jay expectantly, but Jay looks at Steve, because nobody he knows ever goes for the _doorbell_. The mailman knocks; everyone else just comes in.

“What time is it?” Jay asks. “That can't be Stark already.”

“Oh shit,” Steve says. “Oh _shit_ ,” he adds, with feeling, and tries to get out of bed so fast he almost falls off the edge of the mattress. “What'd you tell him?”

“To come whenever,” Jay replies, sitting up. He reaches back under his pillow for the phone while Steve attempts to untangle himself from the sheets: _9:18am_. Jay'd texted at just after six, so it isn't unreasonable; Stark wasn't already in Sussex or anything _creepy_. Just unexpected. Jay's not nearly as ruffled as Steve, who's practically vibrating through the walls. Jay watches him disappear out of sight, looking frantically for something under the bed, and thinks about texting Eva, telling her not to bring the kids over today. But, hell. He might need a lift, if it goes badly with Stark.

“Where're my pants?”

“At the foot of the bed, next to the Cummings,” Jay says, rubbing his eyes.

“Where's my _shirt_?”

“On the fender.”

Jay opens his eyes just in time to see Steve rush out of the room, pulling his tee-shirt on inside out.

Jay hears the door open, and muffled voices. The Nurse appears in the hall and raises a fractional eyebrow. Jay shakes his head; she leaves. Steve appears a minute later, looking a little harried, and more so when he double-takes at Jay, sitting up in bed with his elbow on his raised knee, chin in hand, wearing nothing but blankets to the waist. Stark appears in the doorway before Steve can do anything about it.

Stark looks smaller than he does on television, more compact. Darker, too, but TV lighting washes everyone out. Jay doesn't think Stark looks like the kind of guy who finds a tanning booth in London, in September, purely for the purpose of looking like he's got more Mediterranean blood than he really does. Glancing between Steve and Jay, he looks like a man trying very hard not to grin like a four-year-old who's been presented with an entire cake.

Steve's starting to mouth something that could be either a warning or a prayer, when Stark says, “So how do you feel about haptic feedback? I'll take a stab and say you're not thrilled about subdermal electrodes, that's cool, not everybody's into biohacking, but if you want to keep the weight down and avoid breaking your coffee mugs, I've had promising results with myoelectric sheeting. Carbon nanotube membranes. Voltage-gated, very simple, a caveman could program the app linkage. Do you have a smartphone?”

“Sure,” Jay says, because responding to the rest of it might constitute an act of insanity. “I guess I should put pants on for this, huh?”

“Are you kidding?” Stark says. “Shove over, Furiosa, I can work _ex vivo_. A man should never have to put pants on in his own home. Golden rule.”

“Actually,” Steve says, “That's 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.”

“Exactly,” says Stark. He turns back to Jay. “Speaking of golden opportunities, seriously, there's a picture of this next to the definition in the OED—I can't _not_ ask. What's he like in bed?”

Jay leers theatrically at Steve, who rolls his eyes. “I'm gonna go put some coffee on, you ladies can gossip in peace,” he says, and makes his escape.

“He's exactly the way you'd expect,” Jay says, “But nice job getting him out of the room. What did you really want to ask?”

Stark's clowny expression turns knife-sharp. “Hi, I'm Tony, I think we're going to be best friends,” he says, walking in, casting his eyes around the room. Jay can't tell if it's appreciative or not until Stark says, “No wonder Aunt Peg never retired here. I think she was congenitally allergic to relaxing. Let me guess—asbestos and tin foil?”

“Yeah. How'd you know?”

“Dad had a summer place. Me and all the cousins would get sent over to Lincolnshire two months out of twelve. Until the year I blew up the conservatory, anyway. But—you and Steve.” Stark pauses, hands on hips. “ _Really_?”

“What part of it's giving you the wiggins?”

“I'm the first to admit I've never had the best track record,” Stark says, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling unidentifiable objects out of his shoulder bag, “But I've never thought about shacking up with somebody I tried to stab on national television. At least not seriously. Okay, there was that time with Amora the Enchantress, but she managed to distract _Romanoff_ , so I'm calling extenuating circumstances.”

“You think _I_ know?” Jay shakes his head. “Pal, if I could tell you how I got from there to here, I'd have less nightmares and maybe a book deal. Did you bring Steve here, by the way, or did he come of his own volition?”

“Little of Column A, little of Column B. Why, what did he say?”

“Nothing. Just,” Jay says, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, out of his depth: “He's—you'd know better than me. Whether I should be worried. If there's anything to worry about.”

Stark taps three metal balls in succession, which fly up into the air and hover between them. Jay eyes them a little suspiciously. As if they can tell, they scoot back a few inches.

“I've been worse,” Stark says neutrally. “I've been a lot worse, frankly, and nobody took me out of the field, but thing is, he took _himself_ out of the field. Which is probably progress. For Steve. If we're honest with ourselves.”

That's...surprising. “Has he quit?”

“Sabbatical. He _says_.” Stark snaps his fingers and the metal spheres all chime, spinning once in the air. “I might not have believed him, once upon a time, but lately it's seemed like the rock-em-sock-em's gone out of him. How long that'll last is anyone's guess.”

My fault, Jay thinks, uncharitably but probably not wrong. Would it have changed things, he wonders, if he'd continued the thread Steve had started? _It was worth a wound; you were gonna pull a Reichenbach on me_ —Jay hadn't understood the references then, but he's been through the Sherlock Holmes stories in the interim. Eva'd encouraged, and the kids had insisted, so he'd read half of the things aloud by the time he sent the keys. _Come at once if convenient_ , he could have written, and spared Steve months of imagining the worst. But he'd been so frightened, still. Scared to death that he was being observed. Or knowing, rather, that he was being watched by SHIELD, and unable to stop imagining a handful of HYDRA rats still running around in the basement. It wouldn't have damned him to include a personal note, not more than sending anything at all would have, but he'd balked at it, the idea of them reading it and—laughing, maybe, which sounds so asinine. _Childish_. They'd laughed at him for seventy years; surely he should be used to it by now. Surely he shouldn't have any dignity left to lose. But something in him had put up its fists.

He almost lets some of that escape his mouth, but at the last moment he remembers that Steve can probably hear them, and shuts his teeth on the whole thing. Steve, the martyr, doesn't need Jay's guilt whispering in his ear. _What's the rule?_ he reminds himself. If dwelling on it's not productive, drop it.

“So,” he says instead. “What's this arm gonna cost me?”

“Staying still long enough for me to measure you, mostly,” Stark says. There's a pause, and then he looks up suddenly, like he's realized Jay's serious. “Ignore the details, floating funds exist for a reason and the R&D floor needs a new project, but either way, I'm snubbing a repulsive little software engineer and his four-hour symposium by being here, and if I abuse the English language enough on the memo, I could probably work around to paying _you_. Seriously, what kind of cognitive acrobatics does a guy need to perform to call himself a transhumanist _and_ a eugenicist? I want his brain when he aspirates on his own hubris, except I actually don't. Hey, so, what do you need this to do? What's it for? Disguise? Defending the homestead? Arm-wrestling Steve?”

Jay blinks; he'd kind of been mesmerized, watching Stark unfold that conversation like a dead fish. “Gardening,” he says distractedly. Once it registers what he's actually being asked: “Uh, equalized weight. Enough strength to lift two-by-fours. And a hand to swing the kids around, if that's not too much of an ask.”

Stark has an expressive face, but not a particularly readable one. Jay can't parse whatever rapid-fire thoughts are changing the shape of Stark's mouth. How much has Steve told him? What was he expecting? Jay thinks the pained expression at the end, though, is calculated. “You're killing me here,” Stark says. “At least let me 3D-print you something impractical, I'm thinking Art Deco, maybe mid-career Pflueger—”

“Sure,” Jay says, and wonders if he'll regret it when Stark's eyes light up. In for a penny, though. “Go nuts.”

Stark claps his hands together. “Did you hear that, Friday? Hey, wake up. There's scanning to be done.” And suddenly, the bedroom is full of bright blue webbing, trailing strands like someone figured out how to turn molten sugar into light. The spheres are the obvious source, once Jay's stopped goggling like a peasant. Some kind of holographic display. It's showmanship, completely over the top, but Jay refuses to make fun of it; it's too beautiful. Stark puts his hands into it like he's sifting for gold.

“ _You got it, boss_ ,” one of the spheres says.

“You like science?” Stark asks him. “Actually, who am I kidding, everybody loves science, even if they don't know it yet, so what I'm really asking is whether you want details. Because if you don't want to be here, I can enable TLDR mode and you can zone me right out, _niet prabliem_.”

“Details,” Jay says firmly, “I want to run my own fuckin' four-hour symposium on this thing when you're done,” and Stark salutes.

 

☆

 

Steve can hear them talking about him over the burble of the coffee-maker.

It's fine. He expected it, honestly. Tony's constitutionally incapable of minding his own business, and James is, well, James, and Steve should've known introducing them was playing a dangerous game of Who's More Concerned About That Rogers Kid. James has either forgotten how small the house is or he _wants_ Steve to know, and working out all those motives is too complicated a thought for a drowsy Saturday morning. Steve can't help how good his hearing is. It's fine.

It might be easier to ignore if they'd've shut the door, that's all.

Steve edges the old faucet on just a little, which helps drown out the details. When the coffee's done, he takes a mug of it out the back door, with a cautious eye on the sky. The cloud-cover looks bright, but it's hanging low, and Steve's pretty sure he can smell rain coming. Down the path, just visible behind some kind of late-blooming floral bush, Steve can see the Nurse sitting cross-legged on the bridge, one knee higher than the other, leaning over the edge and looking down into the water. Seeing what, Steve can't imagine. There wouldn't be fish in that little tear-track of a creek. He thinks about going over and introducing himself properly, but he's not sure he's up for it, and her visibly total absorption in whatever she's doing makes him wary of interrupting. This is her home, not his, and he doesn't want to be rude.

His hesitation's for the best, he thinks, as he looks down and realizes he's put his shirt on wrong-side out.

Just after he finishes pulling it back over his head, Steve hears Tony say, somewhere close, “So what's the problem?”

“Damned if I know,” James is saying as Steve comes back inside. James's stump is marked up with arrows and numbers in blue pen like he's about to go in for surgery. It tilts Steve off-balance for a moment. Tony and James, oblivious, are bent over the old AGA cooker. “I don't think anybody's used it for about forty years, and god knows I haven't needed it, but Gertie says I should run it over the winter to keep the place warm. Last year wasn't a whole lot of fun.”

Tony, unscrewing a bolt on the top of the stove with his thumb, rolls his eyes. “Or you could, you know, embrace the twenty-first century and install a solar-assisted heat pump. Not that I'm judging. Do you have a flat-head screwdriver?”

“Yeah,” James says. “I'll go—damn,” he adds, as a jangly alarm goes off. He digs his phone out of his pocket and scowls at it. Steve's at the right angle to read the screen, which says _BREAKFAST!!!_ followed by line of syringes and smiley faces.

“I'll get it,” Steve offers, putting his mug in the sink.

“Thanks,” James says. “I think the bag's under the chimonanthus by the front door—I was fucking with the squeaky latch a few days ago.”

“You leave your tools _outside_?” Tony says, with either real or feigned horror, as James plugs in a blender. The last Steve sees as he leaves the room is James heading for an icebox that looks about as old as the stove. Between distance and the roar the icebox makes when it opens, Steve doesn't hear James's response, but he does catch Tony's laugh. He's glad they're getting along, even if Tony's going to be ragging him about the fresh hickey on James's neck for about the next ten years.

Steve opens the front door, and the dark-haired woman reaching for the knob on the other side almost falls in on him.

“Sorry, sorry!”

“Oh!” she says.

Before Steve can apologize again, four small children sprint between both of their legs and tear off down the hall. One of them is yelling “Auntie Gladys! Auntie Gladys!” and waving a piece of paper.

Steve almost calls a warning out of pure reflex, but a moment later he hears Tony say: “Minions! Hey, who wants to see a piezo igniter?” So that's probably okay.

“Let me guess,” the woman says when Steve turns. Eva, he realizes: this is Eva. James's friend, the teacher. No—the professor. She puts two fingers to her temple and closes her eyes. “I'm sensing...culture shock. Jet lag. American accent. Could you be the mysterious Steve?”

“Guilty as charged, ma'am,” Steve says, thinking: James has _told_ people about him? He's not sure whether it's sweet or a little intimidating. “Um, J's in the kitchen if you need him.”

“Thanks,” Eva says, and dimples at him as she passes. She has an interesting, almost dish-like face, prominent in the forehead and chin, and an impish smile. Steve thinks she'd blend right into one of those old fairy illustrations, the ones with androgynous sprites in floral tutus, except she's wearing scuffed jeans and a too-large cardigan. She looks awfully young to have tenure, let alone that many kids, but then, Steve doesn't really know enough about modern academics to say. She's gone before Steve can get a better impression of her.

When he comes back with the canvas bag, full of pocked old screwdrivers and a battery-powered drill, the kitchen is a different place than when he left it. James has turned a light on, bathing the dark cabinets with warmth. Eva is sitting on the counter, and James is rinsing a feeding syringe in the sink beside her. Tony's crouched down with one of the boys, pointing at something inside the auger. The other three kids are jostling around the Nurse, who's come in and seated herself at the tiny breakfast table, and they're showing her—finger paintings? Something colourful, at any rate. The youngest-looking boy says, “Look at _mine_ , Auntie Gladys!” James, watching over his shoulder, is grinning.

Steve feels that razor-wire happiness zing through him, hot and cold, looking at James and the life he's built around himself. Quieter, though, than before. Not as sharp. Steve had been so worried that James was alone, that he'd isolate himself by need or by choice, that he'd run from loneliness to loneliness in the absence of anyone he could trust, but Steve shouldn't have worried—he should've been more trusting. He underestimated James, and badly. He makes a silent promise that he won't do it again.

But he feels shockingly out of place, as though he's weaselled his way into a world where he doesn't belong. He'd felt something similar when he'd walked out of Phillips's office with shiny new captain's bars on his jacket. A fresh-faced private had saluted him with eyes like dinner plates, and it'd taken everything in him to nod like somebody who knew what he was doing and just keep walking, to not grab the guy and say, _stop, Jesus, stop, it's not like that. Yesterday I was you_. Like he was back under the lights and there was no way off the stage.

The feeling only lasts for a handful of moments, because James sees him in the doorway and his whole face goes soft. He dodges a wiggling kid and comes right up to Steve, hooking a finger in one of Steve's belt loops.

“I see you've met the menagerie,” James says. He's so close; Steve reflexively grips the bag tighter. Close enough to—and all those people around them. Steve's heart does a nauseating swoop, and then all the fear drains out of him. No one's going to say anything, he realizes: no one here disapproves. Well, the kids might, if Steve leaned forward and kissed James like he wants to, like a movie star, complete with dip. But that would be all. Just a couple of gross adults, being embarrassing, god, how awful. Actually, he thinks he'd be more self-conscious if the Nurse was watching.

Speaking of which.

 _Auntie Gladys?_ Steve mouths at James.

James looks like he's trying not to laugh. _Later_ , he mouths back.

“Which screwdriver did you say you needed?” Steve asks Tony, and the show, as it always manages to do, somehow, goes on.

 

☆

 

“It's a reference,” James says that evening, after Eva's taken her kids home and Tony's taken his personality back to London. They're sitting on the bridge, where Steve saw the Nurse in the morning. The sun's close to setting, but Steve can see that she wasn't watching anything in particular, just the oddly soothing course of water over the stones and little scrubby plants.

After sending the kids over to beg ingredients off the nearest neighbour, James made hot chocolate on the stove to celebrate its return to working order; they'd gone back for seconds after everyone left. Steve's is still too hot to drink. He blows on it and says, “Not her choice?”

James shakes his head. “Well, kind of. There's this famous video game character. A robot, I think, or an AI, I'm not really clear on the details, but the way it talks is similar to—you know. So Chaz walks right up to her and goes, _You sound just like GLADOS!_ And she makes him explain, and she pauses, just like—” James changes his posture slightly, like he's a hawk looking at a mouse, hyper-focused, “—and then she says, real decisive, _Yes, you may call me that_. And it just stuck.”

“They never asked what her name actually was?”

“Not in my hearing. You know kids, though. They'll accept things adults'll fret into the ground.”

 _I don't know, actually_ , Steve thinks, but makes a mental note anyway. If he's going to visit often, he suspects he's going to learn more about small children than he ever intended.

“I guess I was surprised,” Steve admits. Thinking of the expression on the Nurse's face, when she was looking at the kids, their artwork; when she'd taken them out into the garden, later, once Tony'd gotten into the meat of things and needed extra room to manoeuvre around the auger. She'd looked somehow lighter, almost buoyant. Her face not as ironclad. “She seems to really like them. I would've assumed she wouldn't.”

“Why? I mean,” James says quickly, “I get it, I thought so too, I'm just curious what _your_ reason was.”

“She seems so, I dunno, dignified,” Steve says. “Kids are kind of the opposite of that, aren't they?”

“Yeah,” James says. “And loud and messy and unpredictable. But I guess if you think about it, they're also simpler. All they really want is your undivided attention.”

“I can see that.”

“She volunteers at the Alex. The children's hospital over,” and James gestures east. “If you want to break your brain a little more.”

Steve laughs. He can't help it: it's so _normal_ , it tumbles right into absurdity. An almost cosmic level of— “Sorry,” he says, when James shoots him a look. “It's only, I wish HYDRA could see you. Both of you. Gardening and working with sick kids. It's great; I love it. I love it.”

“You're ridiculous,” James says, but he's smiling.

“So,” Steve says, feeling all of a sudden shy, “Are you...going to let Tony build you an arm?”

“Looks that way. I pro—” James cuts himself off sharply, his throat closing with an audible click. Steve waits. It's a couple of minutes before he says, artificially composed, “I promised myself I'd never get a prosthetic. Never,” he adds, fierce. Softer, more himself: “But I got to thinking recently that it wasn't as much of a fuck-you as it used to be. They've still got me under their boots, if I'm letting them weigh in on my life. Just—in a different way.”

“I think it's really brave.”

“You would,” James shoots back. “You think everything I do is brave, or noble, or—”

“Hey now,” Steve says. “I think you're a comprehensive doofus. I have no respect for you at all.”

They can't quite punch each other, not with two of their collective three hands occupied, but they try anyway. Steve slops hot chocolate onto his wrist and makes a futile effort to lick it off before it drips onto his jeans. James laughs at him, and then lowers his mug to his lap, looking out into the darkening garden.

“It's funny,” James says. He sounds far-away, and on the edge of unhappiness; Steve wants to reach into wherever he's gone and take his hand, reel him back home. “It's hard to remember all of that. Sometimes. It feels like it happened to somebody else. It was just so— _nonsense_.” He looks at Steve. “I guess that follows. Spend enough time somewhere else, and anything'll feel like a weird dream.”

“Survival mechanism, probably,” Steve says. “That's—good. Isn't it?”

“Oh, sure.” But James shrugs. “It's just the feeling, that's all. Like I've lost something, even if I didn't want it.”

Steve can't think of anything to say besides _I'm sorry_ , and he doesn't want to say that, so he bumps their shoulders together instead. James shifts closer. Above them, the clouds scuff leisurely away, into the west. It never rained after all. It's a practically perfect fall evening.

Steve is going back with Tony on Tuesday morning; it would be suspicious, otherwise. Tomorrow, James has promised to show Steve the whole property in the daylight, the flowers and the old stone wall and the places where the foxes come and go, but tonight, they don't have any plans. He'll see what the delivery options are around here. Turn on the radio he saw in the front room, stay up late reading one of James's books. Maybe—

“Penny for your thoughts,” James says.

“It's fifteen cents now,” Steve says. “Inflation.”

“I'll give you a whole dollar, sweetheart, if it's a good one.”

God. He can't—okay, he can. He puts his mug on the edge of the bridge. “I was wondering if both of us would be able to fit in that gigantic bathtub,” he says, flushing.

“I don't know,” James says, in that tone Steve's learning to mean _I am taking the absolute mick out of you_. “That's awfully forward of you, Captain Rogers. What're the neighbours going to say about my virtue?”

“Way I see it, you dropped your virtue on my shoe like a cat with a dead vole, so I don't see what-all you're complaining about.”

James hoots laughter. “Christ almighty. What am I gonna do with you?”

“Dunno,” Steve says. “Keep me, I guess.”

“Well, I suppose. If I have to. Seeing as nobody else is dumb enough.”

“Take one for the team.”

“You've got to go home, though,” James says, with sudden gravity. “I'm not big enough to fight New York for you.” Steve winces. “What?”

“If I say 'home is where the heart is,' will you punch me?”

“No. Yes. Later. It doesn't count if you're expecting it.”

“I'll come back,” Steve says. “As often as I can. Tony'll drum up some international relations excuse, get me involved with one of the UK teams. Something. Skype. We'll—we'll work it out.”

“And if someone finds out Captain America's keeping a boy-toy in Sussex?”

Neither of them say: _And if someone finds out Captain America's harbouring the Winter Soldier?_ Steve can't bear to think it, but he can see it in James's face, too. _Please_ , Steve thinks selfishly: in all the universes out there, let this be the one where we can have this. He'll sacrifice all those other selves; he'll burn them like kindling if it means that James can be safe in this one.

In the moment he thinks it, he feels a wash of relief, and with it comes the awareness that he's done everything he can. On top of the rest, all the subterfuge and all the caution, he's also put that wish into the world. Whatever happens next, whatever the future will throw at them, it's out of his hands. Like a shock, he remembers something he hasn't thought of in years: the morning Bucky left for war. For Italy, although they didn't know it at the time. Steve had stood watching the ship dwindle into nothing on the horizon and had thought, _There, that's it, he's gone. There's nothing I can do now_. He'd thought he would panic, but he had felt an enormous, enveloping sense of calm. He'd carried it with him to Lehigh, held it over his head like a shield, and nothing had scared him there, not until the end. The empty barracks. The taxi full of Peggy's perfume. Steve looks at James and thinks: this is what it would have felt like, if things had worked out differently, in a stranger and maybe a kinder universe: if he'd never met Erskine, if Bucky'd escaped—if that ship had, on a bright day in 1945, come sailing into Pier 88 with all its pennants unfurled.

“We'll work it out,” Steve promises.

And James takes his hand and says, “Okay.”


End file.
